You're tra vel/ng through another dimension.
A dimension not onl y of sightand sound, but of mind.
A journey into a wondrous land
whose boundaries are tha t of ima Gina t/on.
Your next stop, the twilight zone.
This object, should any of you ha ve lived underground
for the better parts of your lives
and never had occasion to look toward the sky,
is an airplane, its official designation, a DC-3.
We offer this rather ob v/ous comment
beca use this particular airplane,
the one you're looking at, is a freak.
Now, most airplanes take off and land as per schedule.
On rare occasions, they crash.
But all airplanes can be counted on doing one or the other.
Now, yesterday morning,
this particular airplane ceased to be just a commercial carrier.
As of its arrival, it became an enigma,
a seven-ton puzzle made out of aluminum, steel, wire
and a few thousand other component parts
none of which add up to the right thing.
In just a moment, we're going to show you the tail end of its history.
We're going to give you 90 percent of the jigsa w pieces
and you and Mr. Sheckl y here of the federal a via t/on agency
will assume the problem of putting them together,
along with finding the missing pieces.
This we offer as an even/ng's hobby,
a little extra curricular di version,
which is reall y the national past/me in the twilight zone.
Flight 453 to Kansas City
now readyfor board/ng through ga te number 14.
Flight 453, ga te 14.
Passengers, please board.
Let's go in there!
What about it? You need a can opener?
What, do they got a hot poker game in there?
You tell me.
What about it?
You dead, asleep or what?
George, what's going on here? There isn't any luggage.
Hey, George!
Ask them who's responsible for forgett/ng all the luggage.
You better come in here and check me out.
Look, I don't know what your problems are,
but you'll have to tell the passengers
their luggage has been delayed.
Some idiot let this plane take off
without more than envelope in there.
I'd be happy to, except for one thing.
Wha t?
There aren't any passengers! Come here.
Robbins, you better call the airport police
and get them over here.
I'll get bengston in operations. I hope...
What?
I hope he lets me finish the story
before he has me committed.
There was nobody on the plane,
absolutel y nobody.
I don't know... how could it stop
Without somebody on tha t plane?
All right, ladies and gentlemen,
would you knock it off, please?
This is Mr. Sheckly
from the federal aviation agency.
He'd like to continue the questioning.
She's all yours, sir.
Gentlemen, this is not a formal hearing.
It's more in the nature of a preliminary meeting,
as your operations chief noted,
we're here to unearth as many facts as we can.
I'd appreciate hearing from you only facts.
You can save us all a lot of time
if you'd avoid personal hypotheses,
so we can keep the air clear
and not clutter it up with six dozen theories.
Theories happen to be my business.
In the 20-odd years, I've been with the f.A.A.
I've gota pretty good record
In putting together jigsa w puzzles.
Ma ybe some of them ha ven't been
as abnormal as this one, but I'll lay my batting average
on the line any hour of the day.
All right? Let's get down to business.
Now, which one of you is cousins?
R/ght here, s/r.
You're the ramp a ttendant?
Yes, sir.
You were on duty
when fl/ght 707 arrived?
That's right, sir.
Ship came in normally...
Did you notice anything abnormal?
No, she came in right on the button.
She followed my signal up the ramp.
She stopped right on the Mark where I told her to.
She cut her engines at my signal.
Did you see the pilots?
When I signal a plane in, my attention's on the marks
and on the aircraft on either side of her...
Actually, I don't remember...
Bengston, is your dispatcher here from buffalo?
Well, that's me, sir.
I just arrived.
Will you take a look at this?
Yes, sir, that's the flight plan.
Did you see the pilot sign it?
I was at his elbow
th/s morn/ng a t 71:72 am
Pilot William j. Slooum?
Yes, sir.
Copilot John o'brien,
that's the name of the first officer?
Yes, sir.
Did you see them board the aircraft?
Not exactly, sir.
I saw them leave the dispatch office
and head for the field.
But to the best of your knowledge,
that was the crew of flight 107
when they took off from buffalo at 11:30 this morning?
To the best of my knowledge.
William j. Slocum, John o'brien.
Good pilots, both of them.
Sober, reliable, the best men.
I'm not casting any stones, Mr. Bengston.
It's just that the names are so...
So fam I liar.
Well, that'll be all now,
but stay around where you can be reached.
Mr. Sheckly.
This is Paul Malloy, our public relations man.
Public relations, huh?
How much public, and what kind of relations
are you poor guys going to have after this one?
I got 22 years in this saddle
and I've never been licked yet.
Oh, some of them take a long time.
Couple of tons of metal
spread over 50 square miles of countryside.
Sometimes, all it is is a misplaced air scoop
or maybe a loose bolt in the elevator hinge or,
once /na blue moon, a p/lot w/tha psychos/s.
But It's al wa ys something.
And that something always shows up.
You're talking about a crashed aircraft, Mr. Sheckly.
We're talking about a disappearing act.
Now, look, this just couldn't have happened.
An aircraft can't take off with a full crew, 13 passengers
and land an hour and 20 minutes later with nobody on it.
It simply is not within the realm of possibility!
Mr. Malloy, you are dead right.
But the fact is it happened.
/t can't ha ve happened.
An airliner couldn't land that perfectly
with nobody controlling it.
There must be... there has to be an explanation...
A legitimate, valid, believable,
understandable explanation.
There's only one possible explanation.
These 13 people had parachutes.
They kept them in the baggage compartment.
That's why there wasn't any luggage.
Some place between here and buffalo, they jumped out
a gag or something.
That's just brilliant.
And what about the pilots, Mr. Holmes?
Or is that part just elementary?
Maybe they hid in the restroom.
Sneaked out after I left.
Cut it out.
That's quite an imagination, Mr. Cousins.
Hey, what if...
What if...
What if what?
No, I don't know.
It gets me.
I'll tell you this, though.
I get spooked just standing around here.
I get more spooked inside, though.
All those empty blue seats just staring at you.
Look, boys.
We have been theorizing for six solid hours.
I'm just a simple-minded vice president
in charge of operations,
but I've got a passel of newsmen out there bugging me to death
as to what kind of haunted operations
we are running here.
Tell them to keep their shirts on.
That's what you should be telling them
or a reasonable facsimile of an explanation.
Then you better get me another head
because I've been on that phone for six hours.
I've had every news service, television network
and a couple of professional mind readers
trying to figure out what the great big mystery is
we're supposed to be hiding in here.
You know how long I can keep it up?
Maybe another 15 minutes
then the whole thing will pop open
and we'll be stuck with rotten egg on our face.
And sheckly and the government
will take our franchise away from us.
Incompetence, mental instability,
and you name it, you can have it!
Have you checked out
every name on this passenger manifest?
No, I have not.
That's all I need now is to have a small army
of relatives from upstate New York
clutching at my lapels, asking me for a definitive statement
as to where their loved ones are
who took flight 107 out of buffalo this morning.
You haven't even had one inquiry yet?
Now, that's weird, isn't it?
Not a single inquiry.
But the ship arrived only six hours ago.
Maybe they haven't had time to miss anyone.
No, I'm kidding myself.
Of course, someone would have made an inquiry by now.
There goes that old feeling again.
What feeling?
This passenger manifest. The names look so familiar.
Robbins, you said something before.
What do you mean? About the parachutes?
No, no, no, you said something else.
You said you looked inside the plane
and you saw the blue seats.
Yeah, / sa/d something like tha t.
They are blue,
but when I first looked in the plane, the seats were brown.
Walt, they were red.
I remember how faded they were,
but they were red.
Wha t is all this nonsense?
Haven't we got enough trouble
without you guys worrying about the interior decoration?
Bengston, come here.
Do you see a number on that tail?
Of course, I see a number.
Read it off to me.
N-6-7—5—8-8.
Hey, Robbins.
Do you see that same number on the tail?
N-8-0—4-7—5—8.
Hey, are we going crazy?
We're all seeing different numbers.
Gentlemen, I have a theory.
Unfortunately, the only way I can prove it or disprove it
is going to put me in considerable jeopardy.
Any one of you ever hear of mass suggestion?
So?
I think that's what we're dealing with now...
A kind of hypnosis. To put it more bluntly
or perhaps a little less believably,
I don't think this airplane is really here,
I think every one of us
had a little hypnos/s performed on h/m,
a little suggestion.
Someone somewhere told us that a DC-3 is inside this hangar
and that it landed this morning.
That's what they said.
So every one of us had pictured in his mind
a DC-3 as he knows one.
Therefore, one of us sees the seats as blue,
another sees them as brown,
still another sees them as red.
I read one number off the tail.
Two other guys read two others.
Don't you understand what I'm trying to say?
This particular aircraft doesn't exist.
It really isn't here at all.
Are you mad?
Are you trying to tell us
this is an illusion?
It's no illusion, it's here.
I can feel it, it's here.
I'm going to prove to you that you're wrong,
or I'm going to prove to you that I'm wrong.
And if I happen to be wrong, I also happen to be dead.
Robbins, will you roll the plane outside and start the engines?
Sheckly, are you sure you know what you're doing?
I know what I'm doing.
Start the engines.
If this plane is imaginary,
then so are those engines and so are those props.
So if I stick my hand in them,
nothing is going to happen.
But if my theory is for the birds
and those props are real,
make sure you notify my wife.
Go ahead, do it.
Well, gentlemen,
I bel/eve I've proven my po/nt.
Bengston?
Malloy?
Cousins!
Robbins!
Bengston!
Malloy!
Bengston! Malloy!
Hey, where are you people?
Hey, bengs ton!
Where are you peop...
What happened?
Bengston, what happened?
What are you talking about?
Aren't you...
You're sheckly, aren't you?
Aren't you sheckly of the f.A.A.?
What kind of a gag is this?
Who do you think I am?
What's going on? What is the problem?
What's the problem?
Bengston, are you off your rocker?
One minute, there's a hangar full of men and an aircraft.
The next minute I prove
that not only doesn't the aircraft exist, but...
What else didn't exist?
Mr. Sheckly, are you drunk?
Or are you sick or what?
Bengston,
bengston, where's Malloy?
Malloy?
Malloy, you better get up
and zero in your boss here
as to the cause and effects of insanity.
You...
"Miss penn y ja ok son, bea ut/ful, young mo vie starlet
"ls shown here arr/v/ng
"on trans-east airline, flight 107
which arrived from buffalo this morning."
What's going on?
Who is this guy?
How could they have taken that picture?
How could they say it landed
and everything went...
Went what?
You know this guy?
Mr. Sheckly,
this is Paul Malloy,
our public relations man.
What are you talking about?
I know who it is.
What's going on here?
Maybe you'd better tell us.
What is so odd
about a picture of a flight arrival?
What's so od...
Bengston, you check me out.
Didn't that flight arrive
with nobody on it?
No crew, no stewardess,
no passengers, no baggage?
No, Mr. Sheckly.
Flight 107 from our airline
arrived at 12:50 today on schedule.
You mean to tell me,
you're not missing an aircraft?
That's exactly what he's telling you.
We're not missing any flight 107,
or any other flight.
Well, how could that be?
You never missed a flight 107?
That's right.
You were the examiner on that one.
On what one?
We lost just one flight
in some 20-odd years, just one.
Flight 107.
But, Mr. Sheckly,
that was some 17 or 18 years ago.
Flight 107 out of buffalo.
But like I said, that was 17, 18 years ago.
Well, what happened to her?
Lost in the fog, never found,
we figured she must have gone off course,
went out over the ocean, went down there.
You never found her?
Never found her.
Mr. Sheckl y here in ves t/ga Ted.
But that was one case
you were never able to button up.
Nobody was ever able to button it up.
Just s/ts on the books as lost,
presumed crashed for reasons unknown.
Mr. Sheckl y,
why don't you let me drive you home?
For reasons unknown?
But I never been licked on a case yet. Never.
We've always found the causes.
Always.
We've always found the causes.
Always.
I never been licked on a case yet.
We've always found the causes.
Always found the causes.
We've al wa ys found the causes.
I never been I/cked ona case yet.
I guess so.
Flight 107.13 people.
Pilot, William j. Slocum.
Copilot, John o'brien.
What happened to you?
What went wrong?
Where did you go down?
Flight 107!
Hey, flight 107!
Why didn't you leave a clue?
Why didn't you make a contact?
Why didn't you?
Why didn't you leave a clue?
Why didn't you ever tell anyone what happened to you?
Picture of a man with an aohilles' heel,
a mystery tha t landed in his life
and then turned into a heavy we/ght,
dragged across the years
to ul t/ma tel y take the form of an ill us/on.
Now, tha t's the cl/n/cal answer
that they put on the tag as they take h/mawa y.
But if you choose to think tha t the explana t/on
has to do with an a/rborne flying dutchman,
a ghost sh/p In a fog-enshrouded n/ght
on a fl/ght tha t never ends,
then you're do/ng your business in an old stand
in the twilight zone.
Rod serl/ng, creator of the twilight zone,
w/ll tell you about next week's story
after th/s word from our al terna te sponsor.
And now, Mr. Serl/ng.
Next week on the tw/I/ghtzone,
we use a camera like an X-ray
and look under the skin of a neighborhood of men and women.
It's a little experiment in human nature and behavior
on the night that a conelrad broadcast
shatters their composure
with an announcement of terse terror...
A bomb is coming.
Most of our stories are a little far out.
This one is very close in.
You'll see what I mean next week when we present "the shelter."
Be sureand wa toh gunsmoke starr/ng James arness,
sa turda yn/ghts over most of these same sta t/ons.
The twilight zone, brought to you by, - The twilight zone has been brought to you by,